Houston taught school as a young woman, and worked as a curriculum consultant for the Minnesota Department of Education.[4][5] From 1936 to 1937, she was program secretary for the National League of Women Voters.[6][7] She was a co-director of the Minneapolis League of Women Voters in 1938.[8] She and her husband were among the founders of an early cooperative health plan, Group Health Mutual.[9][10] She wrote Our Interests as Consumers (1941), a social studies text.[11] Also in 1941, she taught at the Minneapolis Labor School.[12] She was a political science professor at Macalester College from 1945 to 1955.[1][13] One of her students at Macalester was politician Walter Mondale.[14]
From 1950 to 1954, Jacobson was chair of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, which she also helped to found.[14] In 1955 she became chief assistant to governor Orville Freeman. She was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for International Affairs during the Johnson administration, from 1964 to 1969.[15] She made the dress she wore for her swearing-in ceremony, from beige and gold silk.[16] She was the highest ranking woman in the USDA,[1] and represented the United States at international meetings involving food and agriculture.[2] She also recommended a strategic reserve of agricultural products, including "food, feeds, and fibers".[16] She spoke on the demographic transition to an audience of military specialists in 1966, warning of the risk of "mass famine" and the need for international agricultural development.[17]
In the 1970s, Jacobson was executive director of Population Crisis Committee, director of the Freedom from Hunger Foundation, and director of the Greenbelt Cooperative. She retired to Richfield, Minnesota in 1982.[2]
Personal life
Dorothy Houston married George W. Jacobson, a consultant for USAID,[7] in 1937.
Death
Dorothy Houston died in Minneapolis in 1985 at the age of 77.[2]
^Tufty, Ester Van Wagoner (April 8, 1964). "Michigan in Washington". The Holland Evening Sentinel. p. 23. Retrieved March 3, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.